Using USA Today's College Athletics DB to analyze current and future conference re-alignment

As an amatuer follower of conference re-alignment, I became interested in trying to figure out the true conference value of all the potential schools that seem to come up for discussion and started looking for data to see what kind of value they might drive for the Big Ten (or other conferences).

I recently started reviewing the USA Today's database again and was surprised to find that much of the data that people are looking for - that is, how much value the schools can derive from multimedia markets, is already available here.

In particular, I will be looking at the following two columns in this datbase :

Rights/Licensing: Includes revenue for athletics from radio and television broadcasts, Internet and ecommerce rights received from institution-negotiated contracts, the NCAA and conference revenue sharing arrangements; ; and revenue from corporate sponsorships, licensing, sales of advertisements, trademarks and royalties. Includes the value of in-kind products and services provided as part of the sponsorship (e.g., equipment, apparel, soft drinks, water and isotonic products).

Other revenue: All other sources of revenue including game guarantees, support from third-parties guaranteed by the school such as TV income, housing allowances, camp income, etc.; tournament/bowl game revenues from conferences; endowments and investments; revenue from game programs, novelties, food or other concessions; and parking revenues and other sources.

While the other revenue column isn't completely 'clean' data in that it does add non-media revenue, I felt that it was better to add it to capture the relevant data than to remove it completely.

The focus on these two data points means that revenue sources that only benefit the school in question - ticket sales, student fees, and donor contributions - are not added to this list, which impacts the overall rankings of the different schools considerably.

While admittedly a simplistic view of the schools that does not take potential synergies into account, I still thought that this was an interesting datapoint when considering potential schools to add.

Here is the data for ACC and Big East schools from 2006-2011 (I did not bother doing this analysis for Big Ten/SEC schools but schools in these conferences average around the $40M mark) :

*Note: Private schools are not listed on the database so I could not gather those numbers

Former Conference

New Conference

School

5 Yr Average ('Combined Media Value')

5 Yr Value Increase

5Yr % Increase

ACC

Florida State

$29,216,628.40

$2,428,506.00

7.75%

Big East

UConn

$27,844,646.00

$11,236,895.00

67.66%

ACC

UNC

$26,368,441.40

$2,759,169.00

11.04%

ACC

Georgia Tech

$24,276,151.40

$1,487,001.00

6.33%

ACC

Virginia Tech

$22,620,789.20

$8,847,676.00

56.56%

ACC

Big Ten

Maryland

$22,133,770.40

$3,333,855.00

15.75%

ACC

Clemson

$20,315,155.60

$1,631,798.00

8.36%

Big East

Big XII

West Virginia

$20,226,411.00

$2,734,222.00

15.63%

ACC

Virginia

$19,608,249.80

$1,736,964.00

10.19%

Big East

ACC

Louisville

$19,549,682.80

$6,653,356.00

40.74%

ACC

NC State

$18,504,119.80

$3,217,859.00

20.29%

Big East

USF

$16,823,455.00

$8,774,833.00

109.02%

Big East

Big Ten

Rutgers

$14,522,956.80

$2,436,293.00

19.82%

Big East

Cincinnati

$13,681,306.00

$5,967,038.00

77.35%

The biggest surprise from looking at these numbers is the high value of UConn - presumeably from its continued success from Men and Women's basketball. I have seen a lot of angst from UConn fans the past year and it's not hard to see why that is.

The second surprise? The relative low value of Clemson. I guess being second fiddle to South Carolina really limits mass market appeal regardless of how strong the product.

Finally, Rutgers. Yeah - well, like I said, this metric does not account for potential synergies!

That said, it is fair to say that the only 'no brainer' school additions for any conference are Florida State & UNC...and perhaps UConn if those numbers can be sustained. All other schools only make sense for conferences with their own TV networks who are confident in their ability to get full coverage throughout the state (i.e. Rutgers)

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An astute comment made by someone previously was that the addition of MD and Rutgers was not about bringing MD and Rutgers to the Big Ten, but rather about bringing the Big Ten to MD (DC/Baltimore area) and Rutgers (NYC area). That is, selling cable TV on the appeal of bringing Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and Nebraska to those TV markets every year.

Comcast in the DC area may not sign up to put the BTN on basic cable just because MD will be shown on the BTN, but they will put the BTN on basic cable if it is MD playing Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and Nebraska.

The Big 10 will also probably make membership in the AAU a criteria for conference membership, which is part of the reason Rutgers gets a nod despite their media value not being what other schools are. The conference leadership seems to at least be somewhat interested in making sure that whatever schools get added at least bring some value in the research consortium arena as well as their athletic media value. Based on that criteria, you can drop some of the schools off the list, and it's why schools like UNC, Virginia, V-Tech and G-Tech get thrown around a lot as candidates.